Donald Trump’s administration appears eager to use the revamped 60 Minutes as a MAGA mouthpiece.
The CBS staple returns for its 59th season on Sunday, steered by CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, a former conservative blogger with no previous experience running a television newsroom, and tech columnist-turned-executive producer Nick Bilton.
The premiere comes after Weiss, who has been accused of attempting to interfere with the show on behalf of the Trump administration, gutted the staff in favor of a rightward shift.
As Weiss has pushed the network rightward, MAGA, in turn, seems eager to collaborate.
For instance, Ed Martin, who exited the Trump administration after a year as a United States pardon attorney, will be featured on Sunday’s show, the Daily Wire reported Saturday. The segment will be centered on a 60 Minutes hidden-camera investigation into a “lucrative business: brokering pardons for felons.”
“When I heard that 60 Minutes was doing a piece on pardons, I was confident,” Martin told the Daily Wire. “I thought, ‘I’m the guy who knows how this worked… I know what President Trump thinks and how it was.’ So I was confident I could help.”
Additionally, Pete Hegseth and his cronies reportedly pushed two American airmen whose F-15 was shot down over Iran to appear on Sunday’s season premiere, according to multiple sources who spoke to CNN.
But the airmen, whose rescue made headlines worldwide, were not keen to participate. One allegedly “raised concerns” about being potentially ordered to appear on the program against his will.
Military officials were also worried about revealing classified details of the rescue mission, sources told CNN.
For Hegseth, however, the high-profile broadcast offered powerful political and personal optics: American troops performing extraordinary acts of heroism, with the defense secretary overseeing it all.
In the lead-up to the season premiere, Guy Campanile, the former managing editor of 60 Minutes, spoke out against the long-running show’s “destruction” under Weiss’ leadership.
Campanile, who worked at the network for over 35 years before he was fired, wrote that he and other ousted colleagues Tanya Simon, Draggan Mihailovich, Matthew Polevoy, Scott Pelley, Sharyn Alfonsi, and Cecilia Vega “refused to be accomplices in the destruction of the most prestigious news program on American television” and were ousted in May because they “would not compromise our principles or reputations by jamming unverifiable notions or White House talking points into our reporting.”
60 Minutes premieres at 7:30 p.m. ET.
